Exactly what it is about the Red Bulls -- to say nothing of their virtually forgotten ancestors the MetroStars -- that enables them to look one day
like a promising, if not formidable team, and then turn, almost overnight, into a pathetic scrambling muddle, I can't even begin to work out.

We’ve been watching these repeated
transmogrifications for nigh on 17 years now and no plausible explanation has so far surfaced. This weekend, the shift from Red Bulls to Dead Bulls happened with baffling rapidity.

The
Bulls’ first half against the San Jose Earthquakes was not exactly stellar, but it had plenty of good soccer in it. They got a nice early goal -- in the fifth minute -- from Kenny Cooper, scored
off a neat assist from Thierry Henry. And Dax McCarty later hit a second.

There was, of course, the complication that on each occasion, the Quakes were able to tie the score. Their goals
looked pretty good to me, well worked, well taken, by Rafael Baca and, of course, the pesky Chris Wondolowski.

So it was 2-2 at the half, but the Red Bulls looked the more dangerous, the
more incisive team, and I’d have put money on them to rather easily control the second half. Particularly as the Quakes lost two starters to injury -- neither center back Victor Bernardez nor
midfielder Shea Salinas came out for the second half. More about Salinas’ injury in a moment.

Whatever Coach Hans Backe, or Thierry Henry, or whoever it is who spouts off in the
Bulls’ locker room these days, said at halftime, it worked like a performance-deflating drug.

Suddenly the Bulls looked apathetic, uninterested, unable to possess the ball,
incapable of putting together anything that looked like a dangerous passing move. Some of the “passing” out of the back -- by Stephen Keel and Markus Holgersson particularly -- was
inexcusably, and consistently, awful. Henry gave us, not for the first time, his excellent rendition of the Invisible Man.

Postgame, Backe admitted “it was not one of our best
performances.” Oh dear, how many times have we heard variations on that line from a whole succession of MetroStar/Red Bull coaches? The defense, said Backe, that was the problem. Not very good.
Maybe that could be blamed on the absence of the injured Wilman Conde. But not really. Backe chose the two center backs who played -- in particular he brought in this season the Swede Holgersson, who
simply does not look up to the job.

Henry told us, in rather arrogant fashion (a posture that he seems to enjoy) that he had seen all this coming, that he had warned “the other day,
if you let a team like San Jose have the opportunities they’re going to punish you.” A pretty meaningless statement, really. Why wouldn’t San Jose -- or any other team -- punish you
for playing like crap? But when Henry stopped trying to impress with his foresight, he came sharply to the point: “You have to give credit to San Jose. We didn’t touch the ball in the
second half.”

In fact, San Jose let the Bulls off the hook, by playing too conservatively in the second half. The game was there for them to win -- they shunned the opportunity
against a palpably jittery Red Bull defense.

But I think Backe and Henry are wrong to pin all the blame on the defense. Fact is, the Red Bulls only have a working midfield when Henry
decides to play. When he evaporates, when serious midfield duties fall on the shoulders of a journeyman player like Dax McCarty, such an arrangement can only exaggerate the inadequacies of Keel and
Holgersson behind him.

Next Sunday the Bulls -- either Red or Dead, we won’t know until they start moving about on the field -- will take on D.C. United. And they may well have
further defensive problems by then. Surely the newly hyper-active MLS Disciplinary Committee will take severe action against Rafa Marquez and suspend him for his wanton assault on Salinas -- which
knocked the San Jose player out of the game with a fractured collar bone. How referee Ricardo Salazar missed Rafa’s brutal bear hug on Salinas as he brought him crashing to the ground defies
belief.

Such a suspension would seem to satisfy a demand for justice, a desire that Marquez not be allowed to get away scot-free. It would do that, certainly. But this use of a sort of
Star Chamber to re-referee games after they’ve been played raises some tricky questions. It will do nothing for the confidence of the referees if they are expected to become accustomed to seeing
their judgments and decisions altered, even overturned by in cameradecisions.

Nor, one expects, will it encourage referees to be decisive if they know that the final word on
calling fouls is not theirs, but belongs instead to a committee looking leisurely at slow motion replays.

The danger is that such an arrangement cannot persist for too long before the
caliber of referees will be judged solely on the extent of their agreement, or disagreement, with the Disciplinary Committee’s decisions. Which will make it starkly clear that the
referees’ decisions are of secondary importance. Not a desirable situation.

Well put Paul. The Red Bull seem to have a dysfunctional mentality at game time. How Ballouchy, i.e., starts is quite laughable; a player of marginal skill, no speed/stamina, slouch on defense and no soccer IQ. He's only one of several on the squad meeting such criteria. As for Ref Salazar, he is either blind or totally incompetent. He let the goonery go in the first half witnessed by several Quake elbows to the face and repeated corner kick mayhem by Marquez went unpunished. Salazar has a history of incompetence and why the MLS continues to employ him remains a mystery..